Shuffle | Motor City Drum Ensemble

Blah. Blah. Blah. Music chameleon. It's an overused descriptor, but for some, like Cologne's Motor City Drum Ensemble (née Danilo Plessow), it really is a deserved introduction. Back in the early 2000s, when I still only knew him as Inverse Cinematics, I voraciously sought out his jazz and funk-fueled broken beat and leftfield house concoctions. Even as those sounds fell out of trendy favor, the man never lost his love of the roots, and he turned his focus towards deeper and techier pastures, resurfacing as MCDE. In this incarnation, he's settled on a more timeless sound, something that is abundantly clear on his contribution to !K7's celebrated DJ-KiCKs series.

On it, he travels from subtle and deep to cosmic and jazzy, from new to old and from classics to hot off the presses. I'll admit his mix is not my favorite DJ-KiCKs ever, but in the world of music criticism you can respect something for what it does as much as how it sounds, and what Plessow does here is undeniably impressive.

Take Philippe Sarde's "Le Cortège Et Course," which was lifted from a vintage French film and already a prescient techno number. Plessow gives it the extended edit for an adventurous dance floor, and the result should have everyone from Henrik Schwarz to Manuel Gottsching freaking.

Then there's "L.O.V.E.," Plessow's original contribution the mix. The man's love affair with Detroit is undeniable, so there was no way the 70 minute workout was going to run through without a personal homage. Here it is. In the vein of Moodymann or Theo Parrish, it's disco from the future with hand claps, loops, ample samples and that deepness that the D (and Plessow) does so well.

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